Bad Key?

That is only true for young inexperienced piano players. I know for a fact that at least at the two universities that I attended, piano players were not only expected to play comfortably in every key, they were required to in order to pass their sophomore barriers.

Piano is the MOST flexible instrument when it comes to keys, because most serious piano players learn from an early age basic theory and scales. By the time they reach college age they should be on their way to becoming proficient in their instrument, so keys signatures should not be a problem.

And this applies to almost every musician.

I believe the difficulty in keys for the piano has to do with sight reading, not the technical difficulty of playing the notes. Regardless of how you look at it, even extremely good keyboard sight readers are going to prefer that you dont put them in a key that has them playing C flat.

Listen, write whatever you want. As long you aren't doing anything terribly impractical your players should be able to play it, PERIOD.

What orchestra do you have at your disposal? It's one thing to say that you CAN write in any key. It's completely different to say that the difficulty of your piece is something you shouldnt even bother thinking about. That sense of entitlement isnt going to get you anywhere fast unless you can manage to get (good) professional musicians to play any piece you write. Good luck with that.

no such thing as a 'difficult key' for piano. In fact Chopin began teaching ALL his piano students on the B major key rather than C major because if you notice, B major fits the natural contour of the hand in playing scales on it much better than C major or any other key does. So a student should have 100% facility in every key no matter the instrument. And a decent composer should be able to write and THINK in any key.

So no, there is no such thing as 'bad keys.'

What orchestra do you have at your disposal? It's one thing to say that you CAN write in any key. It's completely different to say that the difficulty of your piece is something you shouldnt even bother thinking about. That sense of entitlement isnt going to get you anywhere fast unless you can manage to get (good) professional musicians to play any piece you write. Good luck with that.

I haven't had a problem yet :-\

Bear in mind that, at least at the start of one's compositional career, one is not writing for these hypothetical perfect musicians.

Also there are keys that are tricky for instruments and that sound bad on instruments.....and when considering an ensemble as a whole, you definitely have to be careful what key you write in. Talking about bands mainly here, where players are not professionals, and where some keys are clearly unsuited to some of the instruments.

I'd love to see you write in concert E major for a brass band. That would leave the Bb instruments (cornets/tpts, flugel, euphoniums, tenor trombones, baritones, Bb tubas) playing in F# major, and the Eb instruments (Eb cornet, Eb horns, Eb tubas) playing in C# major.

Not only would this be horrendous for tuning, but it would also be difficult to read, especially if the piece goes into other keys frequently, or is quite chromatic.

Think in the real world guys. If you're writing for a great performer, feel free to write in F flat major, but otherwise, use common sense.

Well to be honest, I don't write music based on tertian harmonies, so I don't use key signatures...

Why even bother posting that? No-one said you used key signatures.

"no such thing as a 'difficult key' for piano. In fact Chopin began teaching ALL his piano students on the B major key rather than C major because if you notice, B major fits the natural contour of the hand in playing scales on it much better than C major or any other key does. "

So absolutely, when you are writing for one of Chopin's students, B is a great key. Also, as was mentioned earlier, if you are writing for university students who are being drilled on a weekly basis for their abilities to play in any key, go for it.

But as Daniel pointed out, we are talking about the real world. And we're also talking about jazz. A lot of us older dudes are good players, but we have jobs, wives, husbands, kids, mortages and so on. We don't sit around practicing all the time--that's just reality. When I'm writing a jazz piece for a friend, it's not a test. I want him to knock it out of the park, and if I have the choice, why would I toss a tenor sax player a solo in E when he's probably going to be more comfortable in Eflat?

Then again, playing in unfamiliar keys can be exhilarating so I can see some value in that. But overall--write what your players will be able to play the best. When writing a jazz tune, you'll probably have several different groups try it out over the years--so write what will be the most accessible for the most people.

...playing in unfamiliar keys can be exhilarating so I can see some value in that.

Yes! Sometimes, it's interesting to force players out of their comfort zone. It works around the "lick" mentality because we all have different stuff worked out for different keys and it steers players towards a different mind-set.

Nifty!

"Sometimes, it's interesting to force players out of their comfort zone."

Sometimes. And sometimes it's just gratuitous and a pain the butt, like throwing in measure of 7 once in a while during an arrangement of a standard. The end result is often that the players just don't dig playing your arrangement. Now, you can call that striking a blow for musicianship, but like I said--it's the real world. I like playing and I like that players enjoy my arrangements.

Ugh let's clarify this -

NON-IMPROV

a) Any instrument in which you do not have to be concerned about intonation ALL keys should be practical even in the real world. Chopin himself said that keyboard players are fortunate as they do not have to worry about intonation - you press the key and the pitch will (hopefully) be in decent tune. Keyboard players learn to live with their keyboards not being in perfect tune all the time.

Any good keyboardist who has been studying the instrument for more than 7 years with a good teacher will have mastered their scales and basic I IV V root positions chords. I had a mediocre teacher and I had to get this done for local piano tests by the time I was 14. Pianist who start at prestigious pre-college programs have this down within the first 5 years of study.

2) Any instruments which the player has to produce the correct intonation matters get more complicated. Anybody conservatory trained will have mastered all keys but they will groan at some (Daniel's posts offers fantastic examples - the E major piece for E flat and B flat instruments is a great example - and btw I did do that for the clarinet part knowing he or she wouldn't be happy - eventually I dropped the key signature (actually C # minor!!!!!!!!) for ease of reading and the fact C# was just one of the tonalities the piece coursed thru. Those again who attend an excellent pre-college music program or fantastic high school music program will have them learned earlier. So this is where study of instrumentation is vital. For example E major for a B flat clarinet will have a F# major but if you write for Clarinet in A then much better - they will be reading the piece in G major.

3) No matter what key you write more problems arise from mindlessly applying pianistic techniques to a trumpet piece, string writing to a piano piece, etc. Great music comes about when you find commonalities and methods to idiomatically capture the sound of other instruments on another. Eg, mimicing the piercing sound of a high loud piccolo on the piano, horn calls with strings, etc..

IMPROV -

1) Robin is so right - the players may know the keys and chord progressions well but it is the lack of practice that makes it difficult for a band consisting of B flat and E flat instruments to do a chart where you are go E maj - F# harmonic minor - B major - C ascending melodic minor - D# harmonic minor - F# harmonic minor - E harmonic minor. The band would just demand you transpose the chart to a more reasonable key so they could spend less time changing from complicated key signatures and more time on solos and good comping. Now, I do not say it is forbidden - it is just inadvisable.

"a) Any instrument in which you do not have to be concerned about intonation ALL keys should be practical even in the real world."

Practical? I agree. Pleasurable? Not always.

"Any good keyboardist who has been studying the instrument for more than 5 years with a good teacher will have mastered their scales and basic I IV V root positions chords."

Again, I agree. But I'm 53 and a working (though supposedly retired) guy, and honestly I don't care that much about being as versatile as I was in high school--the reality is that I'm a far better (more interesting, more expressive) player today, even though my chops aren't astounding. That's the real world part for me. My stomach isn't as flat as it used to be either. ;)

I don't write music for novices

"I don't write music for novices"

You probably don't perform live a few times a month with different ensembles either. But either way, that's cool. It's one of the benefits of living to the ripe old age of 53--on some level, when I'm lucky, I have stopped taking myself as seriously as I used to. For me, music is beautiful, exciting, fun, challenging, uplifting, funky and fun. I'll play with just about anyone whose heart is in it. Someone excellent did it for me when I was up and coming as a teenager and in my 20s, and I'm usually honored to return the favor.

I don't write music for novices

I'm not quite sure why you said this, but congratulations! I'm very happy for you.

I also expect you're exaggerating somewhat... I don't know (m)any students writing regularly for professional players.

Ok, so that was one way of responding to the comment:

"I don't write music for novices."

I'm fine with what I wrote, but as I hit 'send' another question occurred to me:

Who do you write music for?

Thinking it over, I write music a) for myself, b) for my audience and c) for the guys in the band, so to speak--in that order most of the time. Focusing on the first two, it's always in my best interest to give the players something that they can knock out of the ballpark. Maybe I should worry about impressing my bandmates by writing in uncomfortable keys and awkward time signatures, though. ;)

...it's always in my best interest to give the players something that they can knock out of the ballpark. Maybe I should worry about impressing my bandmates by writing in uncomfortable keys and awkward time signatures, though. ;)

:laugh:

All that gets is a bunch of guys who don't want to play your tunes.

TBH it depends on rehearsal time. In this respect concert music is interestingly different from film and commercial music.

In the latter, you are bringing in musicians to sightread... essentially... which means a WRITTEN key signature north or south of 4#/4b is just making trouble. Passages IN or THROUGH such a key are usually written out chromatically.

Many many film scores start and end in something even less adventurous like C or G.

It is unfortunate you lose so many keys. I would be wary of writing a film cue in Db if the strings were very active... but look how beautiful that sound is in a concert work, eg Prokofiev's 1st concerto.

I don't write music for novices

Well, I doubt you have the LSO on speeddial, so... who are you writing for? ;)